“India v West Indies Test No. 1 – What an embarrassingly shambolic display by West Indies!”

Nov 10, 2013 Sports

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Says Colin E. H. Croft
Not as a former West Indies cricketer who always gave 100%, or a bowler once rated No. 1 in the world – my cricketing experiences can be referenced – but as a Caribbean person, I am terribly, totally, embarrassed, angry too, at West Indies dismal, shambolic loss to India in Test No. 1.

Did anyone who honestly supports West Indies, not shouters, soup-catchers, yes-persons, bell-ringers and ubiquitous hangers-on, enjoy that?
India is laughing at us, beaten in just three days by an innings and 51 runs!
Whenever I objectively critique West Indies, as in Champions Trophy 2013, when our cricketers at the crease seemed unable to understand or appreciate Duckworth-Lewis calculations, even as they were high-lighted on the score-board, I am normally ostracized, even directly threatened with banishment from West Indies cricket.
We lost then, eliminated from the competition, from a winning position!
So, as actor Dan Ackroyd succinctly suggested in one of my most favorite movies, ‘Trading Places’:
“If that the way they want it, no problem!”
Life goes on!
While not taking myself too seriously or importantly, I have survived everything thrown at me, despite extremely severe external stimuli.  I will continue to do so, with God’s help.
But I definitely will not, being fit, and fully cognizant at age 60, lie, especially not to myself!
So, with knowledge that this messenger will probably be killed, again, universally hated, metaphorically – I must be Dracula – and this message not heeded, I say this:
Facts:
West Indies 2nd innings batting effort was as desperately poor as I have seen in Test cricket, and I have been watching Tests since, as a 12 year old, witnessing Australia’s tour to West Indies 1965.
Most of West Indies bowling too, despite off-spinner Shane Shillingford’s Herculean input – 55-9-167-6 – was just pop-corn stuff!
How did India get from 6-156 to 453?  Good batting from Rohit Sharma and Ravichandran Ashwin and also obnoxious West Indian bowling!
West Indies batted, 2nd innings, just over ODI limits – 50 overs – on a perfectly placid pitch, lasting only 54.1 overs, for 168, in two sessions’ play.

Shillingford alone bowled more overs than West Indies batted 2nd dig!
Former Indian cricketer Sanjay Mandrekar tweeted:  “It is so pleasing to see a seam bowler, (Mohammed Shami), not a spinner, win a Test for India in typical Indian conditions!”
140 characters were never so damning!
Where were team resolve, determination and occupation-of-the-crease acuity of our vaunted batsmen?
Had it not been for Marlon Samuels, 1st innings, and Shiv Chanderpaul, 2nd, our embarrassment would have been greater.
This is not about not playing many long games recently anymore.  This is more about our representatives obviously not being able to think for more than a few hours on end.
Even captain Darren Sammy confirmed that!
West Indies 1st innings lasted less than entire Day 1.
Test cricket lasts five days.  Required cranial energies must last that long too!
With associated personnel in dressing rooms nowadays – it must be like carnival in there now – where is that vital ingredient, a batting coach who knows how to teach necessary mental elements of batting, and physical skills, required for strength and resilience?
West Indies were dismissed by a fast bowler – Shami; magnificent; match figures 9-118 – on a pitch that supposedly gave West Indies’ fast bowlers no assistance at all.
Tino Best had 17-0-71-1; Sheldon Cottrell 18-3-72-1.
With time and effort, debutant Cottrell may do okay.
Best was extremely atrocious, and must be past his “sell-by” date now, out-bowled by Cottrell, which does not say much.  Stupid on-the-field antics do not a fast bowler make!
If I had played this Test, and had Best’s experience and figures – 21 Tests; only 48 wickets – amazingly, just over 2 wickets per Test, for a front-line bowler, I would have thought that my place in the team had to be in jeopardy, that I needed to perform, not just be some jackass on the field playing up to the crowd.
I would also have been ashamed to have been seen to be so innocuous when another was so brilliant. That is why I almost always out-bowled my more illustrious fast bowling partners when I played Tests!
Check it!
One gets the impression that all West Indies at Kolkata was trying to do was to be nice!
Test cricket is not a beauty contest, not for babies, nor a joke.  It is tantamount to war, fighting for 7 million people!
Similarly angering was another former Indian cricketer, Sunil Gavaskar, condescending, patronizing and disingenuous, suggesting that West Indies always played the game in the right spirit, wonderful to say when your team wins.
What crap!
Gavaskar seems to have selective memory!
He, his captain, Bishen Singh Bedi and team, on surrendering that Test to West Indies; Jamaica 1976;  openly called West Indian fast bowlers Wayne Daniel, Vanburn Holder and Michael Holding terrorists, hooligans and animals when they decimated India, half of India’s team injured from debilitating body blows, unable to bat.
Yes, I am angry and have a right to be!
This latest debacle was terrible representation, and quite embarrassing too.  Enjoy, or not!

 

 

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